Word: houstons
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...most self-critical of the three. She regrets "naively [thinking] that I would be handing Ken Lay his leadership moment," regrets not taking her concerns to a higher authority. To get by, she has cloaked herself in her family and church. "Her faith," says William Vanderbloemen, her pastor at Houston's First Presbyterian, "was sharpened." But so, markedly, was her despair. "There were some very bleak moments throughout when you're just so disappointed with human nature, with the power of greed and the power of denial, trying to rationalize that you've done nothing wrong," she says...
Things were different back in Tomball, Texas, a town of 10,000 where Watkins and her younger sister Julie were raised. Today, with its strip malls and megastores, Tomball is at the outer edge of Houston's suburban sprawl. But when Watkins was growing up, it was a no-stoplight town with an oil derrick on each corner. Her ancestors were among the hardy German immigrants who descended in the mid-1800s and helped establish the Lutheran church her mother Shirley Klein Harrington still attends each Sunday. It seemed as if Watkins either knew or was related to everyone...
...took an accounting job at Arthur Andersen and, after a stint in the Houston office, put in for a transfer to New York City. There she developed a taste for summers in the Hamptons, playground to Manhattan's elite, and winters swimming with stingrays in the Caribbean. Before long, she sounded like any other perpetually irritated New Yorker, haranguing cabdrivers who took the long way home to her small Upper East Side apartment. "New York kind of toughens you up for people doing the right thing," she says. "It almost makes you call bulls___ faster...
Such impudence, while a virtue in New York, was less appreciated when she returned to Houston in 1993 to take a job with Enron. Her mother noted the new attitude. And while Watkins rose quickly through the ranks and was thought of as whip smart, she earned an equally well-deserved reputation for lack of tact. Poised and pleasant with clients, Watkins often barreled right through her colleagues. They nicknamed her the "Buzz Saw." One boss pulled her aside and said, "Sherron, you kind of cut people off at the jugular. There they are bleeding at the neck, and then...
...Houston Astros at my 21st birthday party, with Brad Ausmus jumping out of the cake. And while we’re on the subject, why not let Brad work his catching magic with some quality pitching besides Wade Miller and future Cy Young winner Roy Oswalt? Though he just resigned for another year, the Shaner’s back is iffy, so it can’t hurt to pick up another veteran...